A day after meeting Shiv Sena minister Eknath Shinde, advocate Ujjwal Nikam, who worked on several high profile cases as special public prosecutor, on Sunday denied he would be joining any political party. On Saturday, Shinde held a closed-door meeting with Nikam at the latter’s residence in Jalgaon.
“No, I am not joining any political party,” Nikam told The Indian Express when asked whether he had received an offer from the Shiv Sena. “I have good relations with political leaders. We keep meeting each other….Shinde was on a tour of Jalgaon. We met, had a chat…but not on political issues. The Sena leader did not make an offer to join the party,” Nikam said.
“Even another Sena leader, Sanjay Raut, had met me at my residence last month. It was a personal visit and not political,” he added.
Asked how many parties approached him till date, Nikam said, “NCP is the only party which had approached me during the last Lok Sabha election. I was even offered a ticket to contest the Lok Sabha poll. I had refused the offer,” he said.
On the possibility of joining a political party in the future, Nikam said, “I can’t speak about the future in the present. If anything has to happen, it will happen at that moment. It is futile to talk about what is going to happen in future. Let us live in the present, I am not joining any political party, that’s for sure.”
Nikam said he has friends in all political parties but has never taken sides or compromised with his profession.
“When Congress was in power both at state and in Centre, I had fought against Sanjay Dutt in the arms possession case. Similarly, I had also fought a case against Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray,” he said.
Sena chief spokesperson Sanjay Raut also denied that Sena was seeking to rope in Nikam. “No, there is no truth in it. We have not approached Nikam to join the party. Shinde had met Nikam, that is true, but it must be for personal reasons. I had also met Nikam last month, we discussed general issues and not politics,” he said, adding that Sena has no plans to make the special PP an offer to join the party.
Nikam first shot to fame when he was picked by the government as special public prosecutor in the serial Mumbai bombings of 1993. After that, he fought several high profile terrorism and murder cases including the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack case, Gulshan Kumar murder case and Pramod Mahajan murder case.
A BJP leader claimed that Sena was seeking Nikam’s legal expertise as some of its leaders are facing probe from central investigative agencies. “The ED is already investigating one Sena leader and soon a Sena minister will also face an ED probe,” he said.